In recent years, the substantial increases in costs of basic materials such as metals, metal alloys, plastics, rubbers and the like has encouraged development and use of light weight structural materials, reinforcing materials and of filler materials to reduce the amount and cost of the basic materials used and the weight of the finished materials.
The known methods of producing metal and metal glass filaments and wires suffer the disadvantages of requiring the use of relatively large amounts of energy to manufacture a given amount of filaments or wire and from relatively low production rates.
The known methods of producing metal and metal glass filaments and wires are also believed to suffer the disadvantages of not being able to produce filaments and wires of relatively small uniform diameters and uniform lengths and of not being able to achieve rapid uniform quench rates, which disadvantages would make it difficult to produce materials of controlled and predictable characteristics, quality and strength.
The Kavesh U.S. Pat. No. 3,845,805 describes a known process for making metal filaments and wires which process comprises forming a free jet of molten metal in a gaseous interface, traversal of the free jet through the interface into a fluid quench medium flowing concurrently with the molten metal jet and rapid cooling and solidification of the metal jet into filamentary form.
The Chen et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,856,513 discloses various metal alloy compositions and a process for making a metal filament or wire from the disclosed compositions which process comprises squirting a molten jet or stream of the metal alloy composition into a quench medium of stationary water or refrigerated brine. The Chen et al patent disclosed compositions and method can produce amorphous metal filaments and wires.
The process and apparatus of the present invention are believed to overcome the disadvantages of the prior art processes and are capable of producing microfilaments of uniform diameter and relatively uniform length of controlled and predictable physical and chemical characteristics, quality and strength at economical low costs. These advantages are achieved by the method of the present invention by which the small diameter microfilaments are formed and the capability of rapidly and uniformally quenching the microfilaments.
The present invention produces relatively long metal microfilaments of uniform small diameter and of relatively uniform length at an economical low price.